Steenburgen, Fonda, Keaton and Bergen shed inhibitions in the film 'Book Club'

Jody Feinberg The Patriot Ledger

Saturday

May 12, 2018 at 4:55 AMMay 14, 2018 at 11:37 AM

An anniversary gift of bedtime ear plugs is a sign that something is missing in a long marriage. Carol, played by Mary Steenburgen, feels the sensual emptiness of her marriage more acutely after she and her book club pals - played by Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Diane Keaton - read the international best seller "Fifty Shades of Grey."

"It's gotten me into a tizzy," Carol tells her friends in the romantic comedy film "Book Club," which opens May 18 in theaters nationwide.

That tizzy is played out as the women experience what they thought was not possible at their age.

"We (the characters) were the last people you'd expect to read it, but it was a wonderful catalyst for us," said Steenburgen at an interview at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston.

When Fonda suggests they read the book, Bergen is the most skeptical.

"We started this book club to simulate our minds. I'm not sure it qualifies as a book," Bergen said, but nonetheless they read it with her mouth dropping open.

There's plenty to laugh at as the women shed their inhibitions and face the embarrassment and vulnerability of finding sex - and love - in their mid-sixties. With its one-liners and physical comedy, “Book Club” at times feels like a 60s sitcom, funny in a silly slapstick way, with barely visible sex. But the quartet of stars is pure fun to watch and the vitality of older women and female friendship makes it a feel-good movie appreciated in these times.

Although each actress has decades of acting credits and well-known reputations, the women had never worked together.

“On the first day of filming, we were scared, and excited and holding our breath," said Steenburgen who won awards for her roles in "The Help" and "Melvin and Howard." "We all felt something really special was happening to us. When you get to this point in your life you are really aware of it in a wonderful way - something really clicked between us.”

Of the four characters, only Carol, a chef, is married, but she is frustrated that the husband she has loved for 30-plus years has had no interest in sex for six months. In contrast, Vivian, a successful luxury hotel owner played by the seemingly ageless 80-year-old, Jane Fonda, has sex frequently, but always with men she doesn't care about. Sharon, a judge played by Candice Bergen, hasn't had or wanted sex since her divorce 18 years ago. And Diane, a recent widow and mother of two adult daughters played in "Annie Hall"-style by Diane Keaton, is at loose ends about her future.

Fired up by the book, they're not looking for the BDSM (bondage/discipline, sadism/masochism) that defined Christian Grey's relationship with the young Anastasia Steele, about which Bergen said, "It's absurd. I could put him in jail for any one of these things."

Nonetheless, they’re open to new sexual possibilities. Keaton has a relationship with a man who falls for her after she falls into his lap while trying to get to her airplane seat, and Fonda takes up again with a man whose marriage proposal she once rejected. Bergen surprises herself by joining the dating site Bumble.

Carol half-heartedly asks Bruce (played Craig T. Nelson) if he'd like to tie her up, as he's lovingly lubing his motorcycle. He looks at her like she's nuts, and she proceeds to do something nuttier when she spikes his beer with an overdose of Viagra. You feel for her as she yells in exasperation, “I want to have sex,” and he rides away on his motorcycle, a libido displacement described with amusing sexual innuendo.

In this film, men are in supporting roles - Richard Dreyfuss as the sweet Bumble date whose good night kiss leads to much more; Andy Garcia as the pilot Keaton falls for; and Don Johnson, as the former lover determined to win back Fonda. Ed Begley Jr. and Wallace Shawn have cameo appearances as Sharon's ex-husband and Bumble date.

And that means a lot to Steenburgen.

"We’re all survivors in a business which is hard for everybody, but certainly can be hard for older women,” said Steenburgen, 65, who also has had roles in the television shows "Orange is the New Black," "Thirty Rock," and "Last Man on Earth." “The reality is that they don’t make movies about people my age in which we’re the leads. Usually, we’re the fringe characters who come in for a scene or two.”

As the established couple, Steenburgen and Nelson are the most fully developed. When they finally tell each other what they’ve been feeling, he feels desire again.

“It’s a really good marriage, but he’s going through his dark night of the soul (after he retires),” Steenburgen said. “He doesn’t seem to understand what is going with him, so it’s hard for him to tell her, and I think a lot of people can identify with that.”

Steenburgen said she also hopes audiences are inspired by Carol, who joyfully tap dances in a charity talent show, despite her unsuccessful effort to connect to Bruce through dancing lessons for the event.

“It was really important to me that Carol not get up there and dance sadly,” Steenburgen said. “Regardless of what he’s going through, I wanted her to seize this moment for herself.”

And she said she is glad Carol remains faithful to Bruce.

“She's not a cheater,” said Steenburgen, who has been married to actor Ted Danson ("Cheers") since 1995. “But she feels that enough is enough with not having her sensuality answered and she's doing everything she can within the marriage.”

Erin Simms, who wrote the script with director Bill Holderman, based the characters around their mothers and step-mother, to whom they gave “Fifty Shades of Grey” on Mother’s Day. Since its 2011 publication, it sold more than 125 million copies in four years and was translated into 52 languages. Steenburgen said she believes the book was such a sensation because "it allowed women who would never be attracted to pornography to discuss their sensuality.”

After Simms and Holderman sold the script, they learned that the owners wanted to cast it with young actresses.

“I was very upset. I mean, if you wanted to cast younger, then you didn't understand our movie,” Simms said, in the production notes. “We got the movie back and decided to stay in control of it.”

Rather than sex, the film is more memorably about embracing intimacy and life as long as you're alive.

“We tell kids they can do anything, but no one says that to you at a certain age and then you stop saying that to yourself,” Steenburgen said. “What I love is that the movie is a little bit about sensuality, how we look and how we feel toward men, but it’s mostly how we feel about being a friend and a human being."

As Diane Keaton's character says to her overprotective daughters as she defends her romance, “Maybe things with us will go bust, but that’s life. And I’m not through living mine yet.”